BT, TalkTalk and Vodafone have lousy customer support

A new survey by Which?, which asked more than 3,500 UK customers what are their biggest annoyances in regard to customer service, has shown that BT, TalkTalk, and Vodafone could improve their services.

The survey of the UK's 100 biggest brands focused on customer service quality was conducted in May 2015. According to a report by ISPreview, had found that the highest rated brand / company for customer service was handmade cosmetics firm Lush (scoring a high 89 per cent) and in second place was the online bank First Direct (86 per cent), while Lakeland came third with 84 per cent.

At the bottom were Scottish Power (59 per cent), NPower (61 per cent), BT (63 per cent), TalkTalk (64 per cent), Vodafone (66 per cent) and Ryanair (66 per cent).

So what seems to be the problem with customer support?

Non-UK call centres (46 per cent), automated telephone systems (36 per cent) and being passed around lots of different people or departments (32 per cent) are among the top customer frustrations.

Richard Lloyd, Which? Executive Director, said: “Call centres and telephone systems are the biggest customer service gripes by far. Firms need to up their game, those that don’t give customers the care and attention they deserve risk losing out to their competitors.”

Customers who experienced good levels of service gave a thumbs up to friendly or helpful staff (53 per cent), staff with good product or service knowledge (29 per cent) and speed of service (29 per cent).